Plurality opinion

Abstract: "The Choices Justices Make" is a groundbreaking work that offers a strategic account of Supreme Court decision making. Justices realize that their ability to achieve their policy and other goals depends on the preferences of other actors, the choices they expect others to make, and the institutional context in which they act. All these factors hold sway over justices as they make their decisions, from which cases to accept, to how to interact with their colleagues, and what policies to adopt in their opinions. "Choices" is a thought-provoking, yet nontechnical work that is an ideal supplement for judicial process and public law courses. In addition to offering a unique and sustained theoretical account, the authors tell a fascinating story of how the Court works. Data culled from the Court's public records and from the private papers of Justices Brennan, Douglas, Marshall, and Powell provide empirical evidence to support the central argument, while numerous examples from the justices' papers animate the work.

Abstract: This book, authored by two leading scholars of the Supreme Court and its policy making, systematically presents and validates the use of the attitudinal model to explain and predict Supreme Court decision making. In the process, it critiques the two major alternative models of Supreme Court decision making and their major variants: the legal and rational choice. Using the US Supreme Court Data Base, the justices' private papers, and other sources of information, the book analyzes the appointment process, certiorari, the decision on the merits, opinion assignments, and the formation of opinion coalitions. The book will be the definitive presentation of the attitudinal model as well as an authoritative critique of the legal and rational choice models. The book thoroughly reflects research done since the 1993 publication of its predecessor, as well as decisions and developments in the Supreme Court, including the momentous decision of Bush v. Gore.

Abstract: Preface 1. Introduction: Supreme Court policy making 2. Models of decision making 3. A political history of the Supreme Court 4. Staffing the Court 5. Getting into court 6. The decision on the merits process 7. Opinion assignment and opinion coalitions 8. The Supreme Court and constitutional democracy 9. The impact of judicial decisions 10. Conclusion Appendix Index.

Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. Selecting an author: assigning the majority opinion 3. A strategic response to draft opinions 4. The decision to accommodate 5. The politics of coalition formation 6. Conclusion.

Abstract: The concept of issue salience has figured prominently in many studies of American political life. Long lines of research have taught us that both citizens and political elites may respond differently to issues that are salient to them than to those that are not. Yet analysts making such claims about elite actors face a fundamental problem that their counterparts in mass behavior do not: they cannot survey, say, members of the Supreme Court to ascertain those cases that are especially salient to the justices. Rather, scholars must rely on surrogates for issue salience-surrogates that are fraught with problems and that have led to disparate research results. Accordingly, we offer an alternative approach to measure issue salience for elite actors: the coverage the media affords to a given issue. We argue that this approach has substantial benefits over those employed in the past. Most notably, it provides a reproducible, valid, and transportable method of assessing whether the particular actors under investigation view an issue as salient or not. In making the case for our measure we focus on Supreme Court justices but we are sanguine about its applicability to other political actors